Why National Democrats are Like Wile E. Coyote
Illinois state senator James Meeks, an African American Democrat and long-time opponent of school choice, just switched sides.
In doing so, he swells the small but growing ranks of Democrats in Florida, New Jersey, and the nation’s capital, among others, who support giving parents an easy choice between public and private schools.
Like Wile E. Coyote, national Democrats have run off a political cliff in their reflexive opposition to educational freedom. And like Wile, they’re experiencing a temporary suspension of the law of gravity — not yet suffering for their mistake.
But we all know that the cloud at Wile’s feet eventually dissipates, and he realizes that he’s no longer on solid ground. By then, it’s too late.
As someone much happier under divided government than one party rule, I hope national Democratic leaders get a clue, and notice that the’ve left solid ground on education. There is still time for Obama and company to make it back to the cliff’s edge, calling for the expansion rather than the termination of DC’s K-12 scholarship program, and voicing support for education tax credits at the state level, as many of the party’s state leaders have already done.
States are going to continue passing and expanding private school choice programs with or without the support of national Democrats. If president Obama and friends continue clinging to the anvil of government schooling while that happens, we all know how it’s going to turn out.
Beep. Beep.
(HT: Alexander Russo)
Good Policy and Strategy in NJ
Chris Christie, the Republican candidate in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race this year, has some life in him. He’s going to hit incumbent Jon Corzine hard on the education issue and is making urban education reform and private school choice a central part of his platform.
Some highlights on Christie from the NYT:
He’s white, he’s conservative, and his support is strongest in New Jersey’s suburbs, where the public schools include some of the nation’s best.
Yet Christopher J. Christie, the Republican candidate for governor, is hunting for votes in cities like Newark, Camden and Trenton, where Democrats routinely pile up big margins, but where black and Hispanic parents are increasingly running out of patience with the public schools, among the nation’s worst…
But what could emerge as the sleeper issue is Mr. Christie’s push for education reform: merit pay for teachers, more charter schools, and above all, [education tax credits] as a way to give poor and minority children better educational choices and create competition that would improve the public schools…
Mr. Christie said that he did not expect to carry any heavily Democratic cities. But he is gambling that school choice has become popular enough among urban blacks and Latinos that he can cut into their support for Mr. Corzine, who opposes it.
Just a note: The article talks primarily about “vouchers,” but the private school choice plan being pushed there is a donation tax credit program. Reporters have difficulty with the distinction.
Filed under: Education and Child Policy; Government and Politics
No Longer among the “Usual Left-Right Battles”
Christopher J. Christie just decisively won New Jersey’s Republican gubernatorial primary, but had to veer away from his middle-of-the-road plan and venture into some traditionally conservative territory to do it, according to news accounts. Will that be a problem for him in the general election? Not necessarily. As NorthJersey.com’s Charles Stile observes, Christie’s ardent support for private school choice is not the polarizing stance it once was: these programs “once championed by conservative ideologues, are being embraced by urban Democrats.”
As we’ve been saying at the Center for Educational Freedom for some time now, the post-partisan age of school choice is well within sight, and draws closer every day. The last politicos to see that will find themselves on the wrong side of history, and the wrong side of voters in both parties.
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